Australia's near neighbour East Timor has a birth rate of 8.5 per woman and a maternal death rate 20 times that of Australia. It is hardly an unusual case: around the world one woman dies in childbirth every minute. Another 68,000 women die every year as a result of unsafe abortion, which also leaves about 5 million women permanently injured or diseased.
These are horrifying statistics. The fact that Australia is partly responsible for them should shame and anger us all.
The AusAID family planning guidelines, instituted in 1996 by a Coalition government desperate for the support of the ultra-conservative Senator Brian Harradine, forbade any organisation that accepts Australian aid dollars from providing, recommending or even supplying information on abortion - even when to do so may save the woman's life.
Funded organisations are also restricted as to the types and methods of contraceptives they can suggest. Harradine retired in 2005 and had not held the balance of power for some years before that - but the AusAid restrictions remain.
In May the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development published a paper demanding that the family planning guidelines be abolished. The report argued that worldwide access to contraception and safe pregnancy terminations would reduce maternal deaths by up to 35 per cent and child deaths by 20 per cent.
'I'm a doctor and I don't like abortion any more than [Harradine] does,' the group's chairman, the Liberal MP Mal Washer, told ABC radio at the time. "But we have got to be realistic. What Australia condones in its aid policies is that if you have an unwanted pregnancy then you do not get any help in the way of a safe termination … After you've had an illegal or unsafe termination then we'll treat you. Well that's good, if you don't die."
Preventing tens of thousands of deaths is, of course, sufficient reason to remove the ban, but there are other benefits to ensuring that women, wherever they live, have access to the full range of family planning options.
The ability to decide on the timing of pregnancy and childbirth is fundamental to a woman's ability to make decisions and act autonomously in every other area of her life.
Universal access to affordable, reliable contraception is a good start. However, in many strongly patriarchal cultures, women are often unable to refuse unwanted sex or insist on safer sex practices. In these cases, a drawer full of condoms and all the will in the world will not protect a woman from disease or unwanted pregnancy.
As the appalling statistics on abortion-related deaths indicate, many women will risk their lives to prevent the birth of a baby they do not want or cannot support. As the appalling death in childbirth statistics indicate, continuing with a pregnancy can mean taking the risk your new baby, and any previous children, will be left motherless.
Family planning services, such as those banned by AusAID, save women's lives, improve their ability to contribute to society, help to reduce overpopulation and infant mortality, and slow the spread of diseases including HIV/AIDS. All of these things, in turn, work to reduce poverty and raise the life expectancy and health outcomes of the community as a whole.
The foreign affairs minister has the power to change the AusAID conditions. There is no need for new or altered legislation and no need to take it to Parliament. When the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Population and Development presented its report in May, the then foreign affairs minister, Alexander Downer, said he would "consider the recommendation with an open mind". As nothing was done and nothing more said, we can assume that he decided the lives of non-Australian women were not a pre-election priority.
Now the matter is out of Downer's hands. As the new Foreign Affairs Minister, Stephen Smith, works to get on top of his portfolio, there are no doubt a thousand matters, small and large, vying for his attention. Let's hope Smith's ministerial colleague Tanya Plibersek, who was a member of the parliamentary group, shares with him her belief that "these guidelines … have contributed to the death of women in poor countries". Let's hope Smith realises the inherited policy is morally reprehensible and easily fixed.
Although Smith has yet to comment publicly on the AusAID guidelines, his remarks during last year's RU486 debate indicate that he supports reproductive rights. "My starting point is that abortion is a matter of conscience for the individual," he said then. "I also strongly believe that as a matter of conscience we should not seek to impose any one view on anyone else."
If Smith's belief in the right of individuals to make reproductive choices extends to non-Australians, he will move to overturn these murderous restrictions immediately. And if the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, is committed to ending poverty and injustice, he will unreservedly support his Foreign Minister.
Efforts to cut the number of teenage pregnancies are to be stepped up after an official assessment found the Government was set to miss a target to halve the rate by 2010.
The Department of Health's annual report concluded that "progress needs to accelerate", with the cut in the rate of conceiving under-18s so far reduced by only 11.4% since 1999.
Although that is the lowest for more than two decades, the total number of pregnancies is up and the UK now has the highest rate in Western Europe.
Critics said the admission of "slippage" in meeting the target was evidence that the Government's strategy was failing.
Norman Wells, of the Family Education Trust charity, said ministers had overseen the "systematic removal of every restraint that used to act as a disincentive to under-age sex".
"The problems associated with teenage pregnancy will never be solved so long as the Government persists with its reliance on yet more contraception and sex education," he told the Sunday Telegraph.
The Government came under fire from some campaigners earlier this month when it announced plans to make the Pill available without direct authorisation of a doctor. An interview with a qualified pharmacist would be sufficient to obtain the oral contraceptive.
A spokesman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families, which is jointly responsible for the target, said: "Our Teenage Pregnancy Strategy is working - teenage pregnancy rates are at their lowest for 20 years. We made a commitment to reduce the teenage conception rates and to improve the quality of life for all young people, and we are already delivering on that.
"However, we make no apology for setting stretching targets and will be redoubling our efforts to continue to reduce the rate of teenage pregnancy by 2010."
